Not to Fail
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: AU. Elphaba awakens in the mauntery after giving birth and makes a vow to her newborn son.
1. Vow

**A/N: I'm an awful girl for starting up a new story when I have so many that need updating, but there you go. Oh, Kennedy Leigh Morgan, you've got your wish. I have about four handwritten pages of the next two or so chapters of _Like A Ghost_, which I have obviously decided to expand, so you'll see that as soon as I have time to type it. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_Prologue_

When she awoke, the room was dark, and in the hazy state between sleeping and waking she reached out for someone who wasn't there, and the cold shock of that, as well as the realization that the positioning of the bed was wrong for the room she ought to have been in, as well as the fact that it was a _bed _and not a bed_roll_ that she was lying on, woke her up more fully. The room was a pale green color that seemed to mock her. She was lying beneath two pleasant quilts, which annoyed her for some reason, and was surrounded by pillows. There were candles on a small table beside the bed. She felt something foreign and sticky between her legs, and when she reached to touch it, her fingers came away bloody, too bloody for it to have been mere menstruation. She did the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation.

She screamed bloody murder.

Actually, she bellowed _"Where the hell am I?", _to be more specific, but she was still groggy and she was also panicked and she had begun to realize that something definitely _hurt_, and so it was not as coherent as it might have been. But the noise itself did the job. A young girl, perhaps a year or two younger than Elphaba, peeked in, saw her sitting up, widened her eyes, and scurried away. A moment later, a bustling woman in her fifties wearing the habit of a maunt came in and perched in the chair beside Elphaba's bed.

"Where am I?" Elphaba asked quickly, trying to keep her voice steady. "What's going on? What's happened?"

"You're in the Mauntery of Saint Glinda, child," said the woman, clutching Elphaba's hand to stop her fingers' compulsory twitching. "You came here not quite a year ago-"

"A _year_?" Elphaba cried.

"More like nine months, dear."

"No, no, that can't be right, it _can't-_"

"Yes, dear child, that's all right, it has been a year, you've been in a coma."

Elphaba stared at her dumbly.

"But…" she sank back against the pillows. "What's wrong with me, then? Why am I-" she gestured at the general area of her hips beneath the blankets. "Why am I bleeding?"

"You've had a son, my dear child, a little boy, just a few hours ago."

"I _what_?!"

"Yes, would you like to see him?"

Elphaba couldn't speak. There had to have been some mistake, this couldn't be real, and _why _couldn't she _remember_?

The younger woman- she must be a maunt, too, a novice- returned, carrying a small bundle which she slid almost reverently into Elphaba's arms. She and the older woman receded quietly into the hallway.

Gathering her courage, Elphaba folded back the blanket over the infant's face and recoiled in astonishment. Downy black hair, unmistakably the color of her own distinctive locks, covered the baby's head. He yawned and blinked his eyes open at her, and she felt as if she had just taken a bullet to the heart.

_Fiyero!_

Tears burned the edges of her eyes. Sensing danger, the older woman returned and took the child from her arms.

"Rest now, my child," she told the wordless Elphaba, in whom fury and grief were rapidly building in equal measure. "I will have him brought back to you later." In a trail of navy blue skirts, she disappeared, shutting the door behind her.

Elphaba collapsed into a tiny ball and screamed and sobbed into a pillow until she had nothing left in her body.

…

She dreamed for the first time in a year. She dreamed of Fiyero. She had seen the blood, but not his body. She dreamed that he was not dead, that he would come back to her…

She awoke and squeezed her eyes shut and fastened the door to her heart and told herself that she was being ridiculous. Then, with a great effort, she pulled herself out of bed, gasping with shock as the soles of her feet touched the cold stone floor and as her legs wavered beneath her. She struggled to what appeared to be a small bathroom. Her distaste for water must have been evident even in her unconscious state, for she found an uncorked bottle of oil within, and, gritting her teeth, began to clean herself up. She cleaned her teeth as well and then searched the room for something than the ridiculous beige nightdress she had on. She found her old black shift on a chair and slipped into it, and then ventured into the hallway. She could hear children crying not far away, and she followed the sound until she stepped into what was evidently the nursery.

It wasn't difficult to find her..son…among the other infants. He was the only one not crying, lying serenely on his back, but not sleeping. As she approached he turned his steady blue gaze on her, and she flinched. She reached into the crib and cradled his tiny body, feeling his warmth and his rapid heartbeat against her. She stared down into his eyes, the eyes of her lover, and vowed that she would not fail this child.


	2. A Child's Toy

_Two Years Later_

"Miss Thropp, Miss Thropp!"

Elphaba turned, smiling emptily but convincingly at the shorter, plumper woman who followed her out onto the doorstep of the mauntery. "Here," the maunt said breathlessly, "For the child." She handed Elphaba a large glass orb. Elphaba looked up sharply.

"Where did you get this?"

The maunt took a step back, almost involuntarily, her face slackening in bewilderment at the other woman's tone.

"Why…why, from Mother Yackle…"

Elphaba pursed her lips darkly and shifted Liir, now two, to her other hip. He fussed mildly at her until she gave him a _look_ and turned back to her thoughts, rapidly sorting through them. Clearly, she could not pursue this any further with Sister Theora; the woman obviously knew nothing more than what she'd been told by Yackle.

"Thank you," she said, forcing a facsimile of a smile. She was not wholly unaware of the fact that it looked like a grimace. Sister Theora waved hurriedly and dashed back inside the doors. _To safety_, Elphaba thought wryly. She opened one of her two bags and tucked the orb in among her dresses and Liir's clothes and turned, expressionless, back toward the waiting coach before her.

…

They were going to a small town in Central Gillikin; not far, in fact, from the Emerald City. The mauntery walls had begun to close in on her like a coffin, the constant influx of piety to grate her nerves raw. She had had years of that in childhood and she patently refused to absorb anymore. Upon learning that Elphaba had attended Shiz, Mother Maunt had said that she knew of a town whose small school was in need of a teacher.

Elphaba was apprehensive. She did not like children and did not do well with them, especially when there were more than one or two present at a time. Besides which, she knew what small towns were like; she'd grown up in several, in Quadling Country. And the Quadling 'cities' weren't much bigger than an ordinary town in the rest of Oz. She'd been born in a small town as well, Rush Margins, and she recalled the way Boq had spoken of it at Shiz. He was enamored of the place. It sounded as if she, like Milla, would be suicidal if confined there for too long, though for entirely different reasons.

She would rather lose herself in a city, but she well knew that could be dangerous, too. The world refused to let her curl up uninterfered with and- what? And die? But she couldn't die, not now that Liir was there, sleeping in blissful ignorance on the train seat beside her. Damn her vow to him, damn her principles, damn her sense of responsibility.

She looked down at him, tendrils of affection swirling nebulously about her heart, coming ominously near to it. He was using her as a pillow, his warm dark head resting on her ribcage. Trying to move as little as possible so as not to wake him (he could _talk_, why must he still _cry_?), she slowly drew the glass orb from her bag, hoping that she had been mistaken and that it was not hers, after all.

But it was, of course. She would have recognized it anywhere. She turned it over in her hands, and some long-buried instinct made her close her left eye and squint at it, as if she were looking into a pair of Dr. Dillamond's opposing lenses. And she _did _see something. Fog appeared in the glass and swirled, ochre and blue, before clearing to reveal a distinct picture within it…

She drew back in shock, much as she had upon getting her first look at her son's eyes.

Fiyero was in the glass.

She dropped it as her hands began to shake, and the glass rolled across the floor. She scrambled after it, waking Liir, who rubbed at his eyes as she darted across the floor of the compartment.

"Mama?" he asked plaintively as she reached the glass and examined it.

The picture was gone. It was just an orb, a decoration or a child's toy. Perfectly ordinary.

She wondered if she was going insane.

Across the compartment, Liir began to cry out of sheer exhaustion, a feeling of abandonment, and the loss of his old, familiar surroundings. Elphaba, a headache mounting in her temples, hurriedly stuffed the orb back in the bag and gathered Liir, a bundle of small round limbs, soft with toddlerhood, into her arms. His sobs trailed off into small, occasional bursts punctuated by hiccups as he placed his head against Elphaba's collarbone and listened for her heartbeat below, the regularity of which usually calmed him. But after what she had seen in the glass, her heart was racing, and Liir began to cry again. Some of the panic that she had experienced early on in the mauntery resurfaced.

"Oh, Liir, please, stop," she said, trying to calm them both. Angry words were always at the tip of her tongue, and she had spent the better part of a year, once her shock had worn off, trying to curtail them. She didn't want Liir growing up in a family like hers, with absent, neglectful, Melena, and well-meaning but bitter Frex.

She forced herself to breathe deeply, slowing her heart rate and stopping the flow of Liir's tears.

"That's all right, then," Elphaba said to him, forcing a happy tone into her voice. _Oh, for heaven's sake, what did he _want _from her_? She guessed. "Would you like something to eat, Liir, is that it?"

The boy nodded mutely, his equilibrium restored but a sulky grogginess still hanging over him. Elphaba settled him more comfortably against her and went out in search of the dining car. She got Liir fruit cut into small bits and drank tea herself, leaning her head against the cold glass of the window.

Two middle-aged Gillikinese women stopped by the booth where Elphaba and Liir were sitting.

"What a lovely child," one said. Liir was staring out the window, not paying attention.

"He hasn't pissed on you when you're trying to change his damn diaper," Elphaba answered with a sarcastic smile. The women made noises of shock and moved on quickly, whispering to each other. Elphaba knew they were talking about her and she didn't care. She did prefer it, though, that now people noticed her because of Liir and not her skin.

Liir _was _a striking child, to be sure, a study in contrasts in the way Elphaba would have been had she not been green. He had porcelain skin the color of Nessarose's, less healthily ruddy than Shell's or Frex's, though his round cheeks were usually red. He had Fiyero's startlingly bright blue eyes, which shocked passerby with their singularity of color nearly as much as they had Elphaba. And his short curls were the same remarkably pure inky color of her hair, with the same odd thickness and shine. Altogether he made an intensely handsome child, with Fiyero's graceful male beauty and her own dark and unsettling focus, though neither was of course fully developed.

No, for now Liir was merely an arresting, intelligent-eyed child, innocent and burdensome and displaying frightening signs of normalcy.

And Elphaba had not the slightest idea of how to deal with that.


	3. Linna

The town was ridiculously small and quaint. It was, Elphaba reflected with disbelief, worse than Nest Hardings. Perhaps there were more shops, perhaps it was less desolate, but it was smaller, and it made an effort at ambience. It made Elphaba's head throb in annoyance.

Liir stirred against her shoulder, stretching one chubby arm into the air and sinking a small fist into her hair, yanking it loose from its pins. She cursed and bent to retrieve them from the ground where they had scattered like chicken feed, and only gave up and straightened when she caught a glimpse of feet approaching her.

Whoever it was moved with slow, regular steps. When Elphaba stood up, she saw that it was a woman, about forty years of age, moving with a confident deliberateness that Elphaba herself had never possessed in her movements. Her brown hair, graying at the edges, was pulled neatly behind her head. She was looking at Elphaba in a way that made her feel like a petulant ten-year-old caught with a torn, grass-stained frock and missing her shoes. It took the woman a moment, Elphaba noticed, to realize the fact of her skin color. Elphaba watched the familiar pattern of her eyes: flicking over Elphaba, onto Liir, and back to her, the eyebrows positioned as if to belie the fact that she had noticed such a low thing as skin color.

"Yes," Elphaba said with cold directness. "I'm green. He isn't. Who are you?" She only barely managed not to add a curse.

"Linna Radosk," she said. "The head maunt contacted me. Your room is to be in my boarding house." She glanced at Elphaba's two small bags. "Where is your luggage?"

"This _is_ my luggage," said Elphaba frostily. She set the bags down for a moment and in a deft motion pinned her hair behind her head once again, with only her free hand. She scooped up the bags again and concentrated all her attention on glaring at Linna's small, wren-like back.

…

The room was spacious enough, with a barrel ceiling, a large window, and two closet-size addenda that served as bathroom and kitchen. A double bed had been shoved into a corner, where it was bordered by a narrow table and an escritoire. There was a single old chair, a small armoire, and a coffee table.

The room was also painted a pale green. As soon as Linna had left them alone, Elphaba set Liir in the middle of the bed and collapsed onto it beside him, facedown.

"It's a curse," she informed the quilt. "It shall never cease to torment me."

"Gween," said Liir. Elphaba yanked her head back up and gave him a dark look. Oblivious, the small boy leveled his finger at her. "Gween!" he crowed again, pleased with himself.

"Yes, green. That's wonderful, that is," Elphaba said sarcastically. Liir squealed and clapped his small hands together. "Oh, stop looking so delighted with yourself." The child cocked his head at her, still grinning. "Oh, hell." She buried her face back in the quilt. "Who the hell decided to leave me alone with you?" she demanded. She felt the pent-up, frustrating urge to lay herself out on the floor and have a crying tantrum, something she had never once done, even at Liir's age. She didn't, of course. She put Liir farther away from the edge of the bed, toward the side crammed against the wall, and put a pillow against its green painted surface, tucking the boy under the quilt.

"Sweep?" asked Liir. "But it no nigh-time."

"Go to sleep anyway," ordered Elphaba.

"Mama sweep too?"

Elphaba sighed. She couldn't very well leave him alone, and he _was _tired. The last thing she wanted was to take him to the market with her and have him burst into exhausted tears.

"Yes," she relented at last, "I'll sleep, too."

…

Easier said than done. _He _haunted her. His voice in her ears, his touch like phantom insects sneaking up on random patches of her skin. She cried out into her pillow. Liir stirred beside her. She fought the lethargy in her limbs and pulled herself out of the bed, ending up in a worn brown chair near the window, face in her hands, watching the sun trace a path across the sky, trying to burn the sight of him from her inner eye. She stood at last, at war with her skin, needing freedom and movement and the space to burst out of herself. Liir had spent his first two years with the foundlings in the mauntery, only seeing her for a few hours each day. He would be fine, awakening without her. She straightened her skirts, repinned her hair, and swept out the door. Linna was in the building's larger kitchen, bent over a pot of something that smelled, actually, quite good. She stood in the doorway a moment, waiting for Linna to look at her. The older woman's grey eyes met Elphaba's.

"I'm going to the market," the younger woman said, disguising her hesitation. "Liir- the little boy- is upstairs, asleep. He'll be fine. But if he wakes up and cries, if you could just tell him where I've gone?"

Linna noted the way she avoided saying "my son," the veiled sorrow in the other woman's eyes, and forgave her earlier coldness.

"Of course," she said. Elphaba nodded her silent thanks, and walked briskly out the door.


	4. Fiyero

**A/N: yes, very well, I am a bad, non-updating person. School is evil, and I have things to write before the literary magazine deadline…AND I HAVE A NEW PUPP**y. **My sister named her Abbey. So I was calling her Abbalah, because that's what I do. And then I called her Fabala. Heh heh heh. I know it's REALL**y short, but I wanted to get an update out there.

**Disclaimer: Has been disclaimed. **

Fiyero had not woken entirely since that first beating in Elphaba's flat. There were days- _good_ days- in which his delirium half-convinced him he was still there, dreaming, and any moment the noise of her rummaging about in the kitchen or clomping in at some insane hour would wake him.

But somewhere within him, he knew the truth. Other days, it was the opposite- his whole former existence- Sarima, Elphaba- had been a dream, and this was his only life.

And here in his hallucinations, he knew at last: Elphaba was the one he loved. Even in his half-conscious state, even when he thought she was only a dream, he missed her with a fierce physical ache (no small feat when all his body did was ache).

It was once every few days, the exact pattern varied, that they came. Long ago, it had been realized he knew nothing of value. When Elphaba had come upon the scene of his near death she had fled, and likely no one had seen her since. He had no doubt that she believed him dead, and he was glad. She wouldn't come looking for him. He knew if she came they would catch her, and he would be made to watch her suffer, and she, him. _God_.

But he would never leave this cell, to that he was resigned. He would die here, forgotten and alone, his dreams his only comfort. And again he slipped into them: Elphaba caught in a rare moment of smiling, eyes bright black beads, looking up from a book. Perhaps a child, in this fantasy: A girl with Elphie's eyes and his mother's curls; a boy with her smile. A little boy…

…

"Unnamed God, do you never stop?" Elphaba demanded of the squalling child in her arms. "Is this what I am reduced to?"

Liir seemed to find this funny.

"you _would_," she growled, dumping him unceremoniously on the bed, an act which he found a great source of mirth.

Elphaba flopped, undignified on the bed beside him.

"Fiyero, you bastard, I loathe you," she informed the ceiling, and then, to her great shame, she began to cry.

Outside the door, Linna Radosk's expression slipped into something unreadable and veiled. She scooped up the linens she had dropped on the floor and made her way back to her own rooms, where she sat at her desk and began a letter.


	5. Morrible

**A/N: yeah, I know, it's about freaking time...sorry, literary magazine deadlines and finals and life and all are not such a wonderful combination. But I saw the show again, and reread the book, and got all around re-inspired...and voila! Plot! So...review s'il vous plait!**

**Disclaimer: Ce n'est pas a moi. **

Morrible did not pace. She was not like her loathed former student, that still girl who exploded into uncontrolled spasms of motion, gesturing and moving with her arms pinwheeling. Morrible was a contained woman in everything she did. Her words, her smiles, her movements. Were she not, were her students to glean even an inkling of her inner life, they would be lost. What is known, even slightly, is much less to be feared.

The whole purpose of imprisoning the Vinkun prince was to dishearten the girl. Elphaba was dangerous, still an impractical adolescent radical at twenty-five. And she did have power, however hard Morrible had tried to convince her otherwise. The girl was a witch, the girl had power, and she was smart, too smart. She would figure it out eventually.

But the child, the child! This is what would have had Morrible pacing, if she were anyone else. The boy, he was a whole new dimension. Morrible had not known about him; there had been an unforgivable lapse in her chain of informants. And now all she could do was wait. If she had gotten to the boy while Elphaba was in the mauntery, Elphaba would have been under her thumb- grieving, confused, chained to the child Morrible would control. But now- the child could keep Elphaba away from her politics, away from her power- not Morrible's puppet, but not her enemy, either, which might be simpler. Morrible recalled the way that the girl had managed, under a binding spell, to kick at her table in blind rage. She stewed, that one, she didn't forget. And Morrible herself couldn't forget how thoroughly she'd underestimated the girl. Who could have predicted that she would run off and drag Galinda Arduenna of the Uplands with her to the Wizard himself? Morrible had gotten into trouble for that, she had. The girl noticed things, and thought too much, and stewed quietly until she had determined what was going on and what she could do about it. And she was no ordinary woman. Morrible disliked comparing herself to her would-be assassin, but it was true. Neither of them followed society's tenets of femininity. Elphaba might, for all Morrible knew, have said fuck the child and run off to explode things like the impulsive fool she was. Morrible would have let the boy be killed, in Elphaba's place. The fact that the younger woman was caring for the boy was curious. Morrible would have expected the girl to have left him at the mauntery rather than to pin herself into a corner as a single mother, a further pariah. And that would have enabled her to run around exploding things idiotically as well.

But she hadn't, a move Morrible hadn't predicted, and that was what was making her nervous about the girl. Not _nervous_- the little sprite of a thing couldn't accomplish _that-_ but the closest approximation of such a feeling of which Morrible was capable.

Something had to be done. Something to test the waters…

Elphaba's first day of teaching had not gone well. She hated children, she decided, even more than she hated butcher generals and their wives. She hated children more than Milla, Pfannee, and Shenshen. She hated children, she decided, even more than she hated Grommetik.

And then she saw it. Scuttling away- a pathetic reptile, a stupid hermit crab, and all her old loathing swirled up like hot bile into her throat, and she was seventeen again, a Crage Hall girl, and that _thing_- what it had _done­- _and there it was, coming out of _her _building-

_Liir_-

She pictured Dillamond's clotted blood, Fiyero's blood, Ama Clutch's pillow, stained with a reddish dribble of blood-tainted saliva- that _damn_ thing-

She dashed haphazardly into the front hall of Linna's house, barely managing to stop before slamming into the shorter woman, who stood in the doorway, holding an envelope.

"This came for you," she said, and Elphaba, breathing hard, grabbed it.

It could have been an ordinary tik-tok creature- could have been, of _course_ it had been, what was she thinking? Seeing shadows round every corner, back to her old paranoid ways. What would Morrible's old thing have been doing out here in a dusty corner of rural Gillikin?

Still.

"Liir? How was he, no trouble I hope," she asked Linna anyway, though she assumed had the child been kidnapped, Linna would have had rather more to say than "This came for you."

"He was an angel, but he's ridiculously attached to that glass orb," Linna said. "He barely bothered me all day, he was so absorbed by it."

"Well, you know children and their special toys at that age," said Elphaba, who didn't.

"Of course," said Linna. Elphaba couldn't read her face. She collected her son, still clutching the orb and gazing into it, and hauled him and her envelope upstairs, where she set him in bed, prized the glass from his sleepy fingers, and ripped open the letter.

_Dear Miss Fae,_ the letter began, alarmingly. At the name, with all its connotations, Elphaba felt herself shudder. _Your prince is not dead. I know where he is. I know what happens to him. Stay late at the schoolhouse tomorrow and you will be contacted again._


	6. Prix Fixe

**A/N: I know it's short and late and etc. etc. but il faut que j'assiste a une boum ce soir et ainsi…au revoir. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

The students were thrilled with the fact that their teacher, normally so strict and unbending, seemed unable to focus on anything the next day. She couldn't remember the recitations she'd assigned, the pages they were to read, which grade ought to be doing what. She gave them time to work and sat at her desk and twitched mightily. She felt she would burn off her skin and expand until she filled every corner of the schoolhouse. She felt as if her heart might overbeat itself and contract or explode her into nothingness. She was counting seconds, thousands of them, and losing count over and over.

The students were dismissed at two. The last one left at two fifteen. Elphaba sprung from her desk and paced the room, her arms at her face one moment, fingers digging into her scalp, then flying outward angrily, vehemently.

"Hello."

Elphaba whirled to find a cloaked figure behind her, face hidden. Woman or man or Animal, she couldn't tell.

"Where is he?" she demanded. "What do you want?"

"Calm yourself, girl." It was an old voice, low and grumbling with disuse.

"I will not! _Tell me where he is,_" Elphaba hissed, coming closer. The figure scrambled backwards, away from her.

"In Southstairs, I expect," it said.

Elphaba was thrown into silence. Tears threatened her skin.

"Alive?" she asked.

"Unless he's been killed since yesterday."

_Three _y_ears, the_y_'d not kill him now_, Elphaba thought rapidly. Her mind was a trap, beseeching expansion, like all of her.

"How can I get him out?" she asked, fighting to maintain her equilibrium.

"y_ou _can't, my dearie."

"What- what if I exchanged myself, for him?"

"you think they'd honor that bargain? And then what would come of the child?"

Elphaba stepped back, shocked.

"you- you know about Liir?"

"I know everything about you, Miss Elphaba. Everything."

"Hah."

"I know why your skin is green. I know the sins of your parents, the truth of your little sister."

"Nessa?" The word was a gasp. Elphaba was faint with remembrance, unwished for nostalgia. Elphaba shook her head and focused.

"Fiyero- you said _I_ can't get him out. Can you?"

"Not I, dear girl, but friends of mine."

"And what do you want in exchange?"

There was a smile in the figure's voice.

"Oh, let us not discuss price yet, Miss Elphaba. There will be plenty of time for that."

"Wait- please, who are you?"

"That is none of your concern," the figure said, and disappeared.

Elphaba collapsed to her knees on the rough hewn floor, her dark skirts in a pool around her. She grasped her head in her hands, and her shoulders began to shake violently

**"**Miss Elphaba?" asked a small, reed-thin voice. Elphaba looked up, attempting vainly to compose her features.

"yes, Ciara?" she asked the small girl, a first year student.

"I- I left my arithmetic book. Are you all right?"

"yes, Ciara, it's nothing."

"Oh…good," said the girl, looking shaken. "I'll- I'll go then."

It only struck Elphaba later.

The girl had left without her book. And Elphaba had given no arithmetic homework that night.


	7. Anything

It was like a knife in her, stabbing coldly over and over again.

The daguerrotypes were left in an envelope outside of Elphaba's room. Linna didn't know how they had gotten there. Elphaba wanted to throw up.

It was him, but most of his skin was flayed to near nothingness. Flecks of blue and mahogany in red, red ripped fleshiness.

She had seen worse, but- _God_- not him. His face…his body. That her own hands had touched and smoothed- oh _Lurlina._

Liir tried to grab the pictures from her, playfully. She snatched them away and held them to her as if they were he, here and undamaged before her. She bent her head a moment before slipping the pictures into her satchel and kissing Liir on the top of the head, nearly getting hit in the nose by his rapidly upturned face.

"I have to go," she told him. "I'll be back soon."

"Where Mama go?" he asked plaintively, used to her presence after school hours.

"Back to school," she told him. "I've forgotten something." She ran downstairs in a flash of skirts, calling out to Linna as she went, and went rushing down the street, kicking up dust with her big boots.

She had left the schoolhouse open, there was nothing of value to steal and no one there.

She sank to her knees, drawing out the daguerrotypes again, letting their fresh pain dig into the soul she'd never before believed in like spikes. But this could be nothing else. Nothing else could hurt with such raw intensity. She felt as if she too had been stripped of her skin, and had no barrier to keep her from the festering infection of the world around her.

"PLEASE!" she screamed to the ceiling, "PLEASE! I'll do anything, please, don't hurt him anymore."

She felt fingers brush her shoulder and she jumped and whirled around. And _he _was there, gloriously there, and unhurt and wonderfully alive, his blood pumping in her ears as she reached for him, turned her face to his-

And found herself holding air, cruel laughter echoing about the room.

"_Damn it!_" she screamed, reeling as if she had been stabbed, tears burning red hot trails along her face. "Give him to me or don't- don't- please don't do _that-_"

"I can't give him to you yet, child."

The figure from before appeared in front of her. Elphaba lifted her tear-burnt face defiantly to it.

"Damn you to hell," she said. "I don't even believe you. What are you, like the Wizard, just…tricks, and mirrors, nothing _real-_"

"I assure you, girl, I am no charlatan. Do you require more proof?"

Fiyero was before her again, this time beaten, broken. She couldn't help herself; she ran to him and he looked up at her with confused and clouded eyes.

"Fae? Where am I?" His eyes drifted shut. "Another dream…"

"No, no, not a dream- love, look, please, tell me. I need proof. When was the first time you saw me?"

"I saw you?" His eyes dipped shut briefly in pain, or memory. "After a class…outside, in one of the courtyards. Reading…a big huge tome, looked bigger than you." He laughed a little, weakly. She clutched his hand tighter, willing herself to believe, to forget the shadowed figure behind her. "Such concentration," he went on. "I'd never seen anyone read like that. And your hair- you had it down, you were playing with it, a little, while you read. You didn't see me. you didn't think anyone was watching. You had the most wonderful expression on your face…" Elphaba covered her face with one hand and shook silently.

Fiyero disappeared again, slipping into tendrils of blue and ochre smoke. Elphaba stayed kneeling on the floor, her head in her hands.

"Anything you want," she whispered. "I'll do it."


	8. Hallowed Halls

**A/N: Hahahaha. I have triumphed. Kennedy, here y'are…a shiny new chapter, and just two and a half hours after the end of the SAT, which by the way ought to be illegal.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. **

Elphaba found herself without the slightest idea of who to trust. Only her two year old son was exempt; not even her students were free of suspicion. Could one of them have found out- could this all be some elaborate trick? Were some of the townspeople agents of the Wizard? In league with Morrible? Yackle? A new enemy- someone else she had to contend with?

She'd thought this part of her life was over. There was Liir now, and she had learned that you could have love or you could have war but not both, or love would be the sacrifice. And here was love, drawing her with the force of an umbilical cord back to war.

She knew she was being manipulated. Once, this would have set her off and sent her screaming and cursing off to lethal foolishness. Now, so long as Fiyero was saved, so long as he did not have to pay the price for her stupid, naïve idealism anymore, she did not care. And yes- so long as she had him with her again. Yes, she was selfish. But hadn't she given enough? She kicked at the post of her bed in frustration and Liir looked up at her twisted face and began to cry. She scooped him up in an unprecedented surge of maternal feeling, holding him so he could hear her heartbeat as he liked.

"I'm sorry, _mo chroi_," she said in the old language of the Quadlings. He calmed and grew sleep-heavy in her grasp, and she finally lay him on the bed and began to cry, painfully and silently, herself.

….

When her answer came, it came in the form of a letter.

_M_y _dear little terrorist_, it read,

Y_our prince will be returned to _y_ou upon _y_our return to the Resistance and _y_our report of an_y _and all significant plans. If _y_ou fail to disclose an_y_ plan, he will be taken again, and this time neither he nor his spawn will be left alive. (M_y _hope for _y_our sake and the child's is that _y_ou fare better in this endeavor than _y_ou did in _y_our attempt on m_y _life. How flattering that _y_ou thought me worth killing, m_y _dear girl. _

_-M.M. _

Elphaba vomited into the chamber pot. Linna, walking by the open door with a pile of freshly laundered towels, smirked.

"I do hope you've not gotten yourself in _trouble_ again, _Miss _Thropp," she remarked.

"Pog mo thoin," Elphaba replied rather impolitely in Qua'ati before slamming the door in Linna's face.

It was what she'd feared all her life: being Morrible's pawn. And then was her worst, half-realized fear: Fiyero, dead. If she refused Morrible, he was no longer of any use to them. He'd be killed, and likely she and Liir would too. Morrible knew where they were, and she obviously had some powerful magic on her side.

But everything she'd worked for- everything she loved…

It would never end, she realized, if she acquiesced.

_One report_, Elphaba thought, _ a false one- then run. Take Fi_y_ero and Liir and run where she'll never find us. Where the Wizard's power won't reach_.

And she was decided.

…

Morrible had shocked Elphaba on her own ground, such as she had, taken her by surprise. Blitzkrieg; shock and awe. (Not awe, not Elphaba, not really; shock and horror, shock and rage, those would be more apt). But Elphaba would not passively wait to be contacted again. She would take action. It felt good, falling into the rhythm of planning, of guerrilla strategizing, even guerrilla strategizing that involved the management of a two year old.

She couldn't leave Liir, not now, not when she didn't know who was on what side or what the sides even were. Not when Linna had all but called her a whore. No.

And besides, she'd the feeling that Morrible was one of those women somewhat undone by children. Not undone in the manner of ridiculous cooing and giggling, but undone In that she didn't like to acknowledge their existence, though they'd saved her life.

And Elphaba was a rather liberal mother. Liir's discipline was all tied up in her moods. She was selfish, but then she'd no idea what other indicators to use for disciplining him. She herself hadn't learned very well, and she (terrorist that she was) had come out all right, or as all right as anyone ever came out of their own personal family dysfunction.

….

So once more she was on a train to Shiz University, feeling young and outcast again. As the train swept northwest across Gillikin, she began to think of her choice as a mistake, began to think she ought to get off at Frottica, Wittica, Red Sand, Dixxi House. Next stop Wittica, Wittica next, the conductor cried, but she was pinned in her seat by invisible spears, piercing her shoulders. She reminded herself of how Shiz had made her brave and stupid both, and she tried to take the bravery without the recklessness and somewhat failed.

The conductor stopped in to take her ticket and grinned at Liir.

"Hey," he said, looking up at her, "I remember you."

Elphaba jumped in her seat and answered skittishly.

"No- no, you don't you couldn't possibly. The last time I took a train was six years ago, from Munchkinland. That's not possible."

"You're green," he said, "sorry, but it's true. You're the only green person I've ever seen, how could I forget? You get used to seeing just about everything on these train rides, but a green person- that stands out."

"You don't see any Animals on the trains, not anymore," Elphaba said angrily, though she wasn't quite sure at what the anger was directed.

"No," the conductor agreed neutrally. "I don't."

"It's a clever plan," Elphaba said, almost to herself. "Cruel, but clever."

"Let's not speak of political unpleasantries," the conductor suggested, as if he knew her. "What brings you back to Shiz, then?"

"Oh," said Elphaba, who had planned for this. "I was a favorite of the Headmistress's, when I was there, and she's been after me to come and see her since my son was born."

As if on cue, Liir, giggled prettily. "My husband has been working out West," Elphaba continued, lying smoothly, "but he was finally transferred to Gillikin, so I'm going to show this one off."

Liir smiled again, showing off his neat baby teeth.

The conductor made a cooing noise and punched their tickets and left with a forgettable goodbye. Elphaba breathed easier. She was a good secret keeper but not a good liar, and that had gone better than she could have hoped.

It wasn't long before Shiz was announced. Elphaba gathered up her son and their few belongings and prepared to step onto the treacherous ground of her youth.


	9. To the Emerald City

It wasn't difficult, getting into Morrible's office. Elphaba had known the garden wall wouldn't be an option, not with Liir, but Liir also made normal entry into the school much easier.

"Please don't tell her, I want so much for it to be a surprise," Elphaba told the secretary who showed them in. The woman, in thrall to Liir, grinned and acquiesced. Elphaba seated herself comfortably in Morrible's chair, grinning herself, and waited.

…

Linna cursed when she realized that Elphaba and the child had gone, and worse, she had no idea whether or not they were coming back.

"You've _lost _them?" her contact demanded later, at the café in town.

Linna nodded, her eyes lowered. She knew that she had failed, and miserably. She shouldn't have been so unkind to the girl, but, after all, it _was _Fae's stupid hormones that had nearly gotten her caught and tortured before- and if she was to rejoin the Resistance- even if she weren't, if she were to go about with the things lodged in that angular dark head, she would be dangerous, and she would have to control herself. She was loose and reckless, and if Linna had missed something, if Elphaba was in another relationship-

Her cell leader glared at her and spoke as if he had read her mind. "She's not having _sex_, she's being threatened," he said. "The letters, her odd behavior- don't you know _an_y_thing_?"

"If you had let me tell her-"

"You know that wasn't possible. You know that might have made her run."

"And now she has run," Linna pointed out, "and she's far less likely to come back."

"Yes," he conceded, rising from his seat and motioning for Linna to do the same. "And now we'll have to find her."

He swept his cloak across his shoulders and hurried down the street. A moment later, seeking to recall the details of their meeting, Linna found she could not remember even the color of his eyes, not one contour of his face.

…

Morrible was good at concealing her emotions, but Elphaba could detect the shock on her face when the older woman walked in and found Elphaba and Liir in her chair.

"Well," Morrible said, once she had regained her composure. "Eager to begin, I see, Miss Elphaba?"

"I'm not playing your games, Morrible." Given that it had, by all accounts, been Morrible who was responsible for the entirety of the mess she was in, Elphaba's voice displayed remarkable constraint. "How do you plan on getting Fiyero out of prison?" She regretted, nearly instantly, using his name; she knew Morrible had seen her flinch as she spoke it.

"It was I who put him there, my dear girl, and, politics aside, have you forgotten that I am a sorceress?"

The edges of Morrible's smile reminded Elphaba of Grommetik's serrated gears and she shuddered.

"I can get you your first report in a week's time, if you supply transport to the City," said Elphaba, using all the control she possessed to expel the words from her lips.

"Of course, dearie, of course." Morrible attempted to smile at Liir, who began to whine at a high keen.

"One other condition," Elphaba said, clutching her son closer to her.

Morrible's clockwork grin froze. "Yes?"

"I want to see him first. _Reall_y see him, not some spell-worked phantasm."

"Of course."

…

The next three days were perhaps the strangest of Elphaba's twenty-five years. She and Liir rode in the same carriage as Morrible, along the same route, flocked with ghosts, that she had traveled with Glinda seven years before.

Being that Morrible was of course among those wealthy people who could afford fresh horses, the trip was shorter; but on the two nights when they did sleep in roadside inns Elphaba used all the sorcery she'd ever learned and all the useless prayers she knew to ward the door behind which she and Liir slept. Elphaba woke every hour or so through the night, and, as she had on her long ago journey with Glinda, allowed herself fitful periods of dozing off in the carriage, with one eye open to make sure her son remained by her side and that Morrible didn't have both their throats slit. All her talk of needing Elphaba did little to convince the young woman. She'd not trusted Morrible as a naïve sixteen year old, and she certainly wasn't going to start now.

…

The coach brought them straight to the palace, and once inside Morrible had Elphaba blindfolded.

"Now, now, my dear child, it wouldn't do at all to have you of all people knowing how to get into Southstairs, other than from the street," she said. Elphaba held Liir ever the tighter and shuddered again. She had not bargained on making herself fully dependent on Morrible. _He's there_, she thought. She had done more frightening things in this very building. She let the woman she loathed more than the Wizard himself take her arm and lead her down to the most feared prison in Oz.


	10. Into Southstairs

A/N: I know, I know, it's been forever and this is short and all that, but it's school

**A/N: I know, I know, it's been forever and this is short and all that, but it's school! It's acronym season, what can I do? **

**Disclaimer: Really, if you don't know by now, I can't help you. **

Elphaba had no idea where she was, except that it was far below the palace. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this- this innumerable plethora of twists and turns. She clutched Liir tighter to her chest; she could feel the presence of Morrible's guards on either side of her. The situation read disconcertingly like a good number of her nightmares. Morrible or the Wizard leading her down into the bowels of Southstairs, flanked with guards in those uniforms, their epaulets glaring like knives even in the pervasive darkness- but this was for Fiyero, she reminded herself. Liir whimpered a little and, with uncustomary affection, Elphaba caressed his dark curls. He was proof; that rosy interlude in her life had been real, a season's brief flowering, but _real_. Fiyero, she thought, conjuring his eyes, diamond-blue. Fiyero.

"Here," said Morrible, and Elphaba lurched forward awkwardly. Her blindfold was ripped off unceremoniously and she blinked, her eyes adjusting from black to grey light. And there he was. God- her stomach spun and leapt and her hands, holding Liir, began to tremble. The boy let out a small cry and the beaten man in the cell, his skin a pulpy mass of blood and ruined muscle, looked up slightly. He didn't have the strength to gasp, but his eyes widened, seeing her.

"Fae," he rasped, and she choked on two years of words and tears she couldn't cry, and she pulled free of the guards and ran to his side with Liir hanging like a monkey about her neck. She touched his face and kissed him gently and hugged him around the neck where it would not hurt. She looked as if she would spread herself over him and try to heal him with sheer force of will, but she held herself back and steeled herself and stood, turning to Morrible with her eyes iron.

"He's coming with me now," she said, her voice unmalleable. "You'll know where we are, I'm sure. This-" she gestured at Fiyero, his crust of blood having replaced any semblance of a normal dermis- "will not be continuing."

Morrible made to move her lips but recalled whatever she had been about to say.

"Very well," she answered tightly.

…

Elphaba was allowed to walk to the exit sans blindfold, the guards' services being needed to support Fiyero. They were expelled, somehow, after myriad twists and turns that Elphaba tried to ingrain into her mind but could not. They came out not in the palace, where they had gone in, but into the sunlight, where the guards released Fiyero into Elphaba's arms and Morrible told her she would be calling in a week, as if she were a doctor and not a monster.

"Don't run," Morrible leered, "We will be watching."

Elphaba said nothing, but mentally she stuck out her tongue and began plotting ways to do exactly that, and preferably kill Morrible in the process.


	11. A New Task

**A/N: I'm sorr**y** for the long delay…there's a terrible thing invading senior year. Actually, there are two: one is called the Justice Project, a 400 pt, 12 page paper, with 100 index cards of preparation required, one is called college applications, and a third, wonderful, but still time-invasive thing is called an editorship of the school literary magazine. I should be working on all of these, but is the first day of winter break, and so I shall not. **

**Disclaimer: Decidedly not mine**.

Morrible called, unannounced, the next day. The corn exchange, which Elphaba could scarcely bear, was "intact;" she had spent the night scrubbing frantically at the blood spot on the floor, her hands heavily oiled and wrapped in a half-dozen towels, but burning slightly from the wet despite these precautions. But she couldn't sleep with the blood staring at her.

She had tended through the night, through her scrubbing, to Fiyero and Liir when they woke, and then she had returned to her pail of water, her towels and his blood.

The blood remained. She had thrown the wet towels over it, oiled her hands again, and slipped at last into bed beside Fiyero on the old mattress (Liir was beside them in a blanket lined drawer, pulled out and resting on the floor), and she fell asleep.

Morrible (horrors) was there when she woke, which Elphaba knew the woman had done purposefully, to seize control of the situation, and it might have worked; Elphaba in a shift with her hair loose and her hands bound up, Morrible elegantly composed, if with a hint of fishiness.

But here, with Fiyero, even if he was too weak and exhausted to have spoken much, Elphaba was Fae, and Fae, here, in a shift with her hair loose was not unkempt or ugly, but an avenging green angel with every advantage on her side, and despite everything she was lovely, and Morrible could, to her disgust, tell this.

"you'd be quite pretty if not for the green," Morrible said, smiling with shark's teeth. "A pity."

Not a lie; Elphaba was by no stretch of the imagination _prett_y_. _Beauty, though, was another thing altogether, one that did not require prettiness, and it was that to which Elphaba could lay claim, in her eye and hair color, in the cast of her face, the curve of her nose, the intense gleam of her skin now, as she glared at Morrible.

"you're a bitch," said Elphaba, because this was not Crage Hall and there were no ladies present. "you're a monster."

"you're naïve."

Elphaba laughed, a growl in her throat. "Why are you here?" she asked, pacing. She went over to boil water for tea, to busy her hands.

"I have another demand for you," Morrible said.

"Hah," said Elphaba dryly, "Not part of the deal."

Liir cried, and before Elphaba could fetch him, Morrible, moving with fishlike quickness, a silver snatch, had swooped in and snatched him.

"you're hardly in a position to be arguing," Morrible said.

"Fine," Elphaba said, controlling her itching aching fists, clenching them tight at her side. "Give him to me, I'll do it."

"Good," said Morrible, smiling evilly, and handed her Liir, but Elphaba thought she could detect a hint of relief in the knife-edged grin.

"What do you want?" Elphaba set the boy down with one of her Shiz textbooks, which he began first to hug and thump on the ground, and then, once Elphaba had opened it for him, to flip through it.

"you'll need a day job," Morrible said, "and I have one for you. Do you recall a dwarf who used to hang about at Shiz while you were there."

Elphaba laughed. "There were many 'dwarves' at Shiz, Madame. You may not realize this, but the province just below Gillikin is called _Munchkin_land, and-"

"I know, you stupid girl," Morrible said tightly. "This is a specific _dwarf_, not a Munchkin."

"you mean an achondroplasiac?" Elphaba asked. "I don't recall."

"He worked at the Philosophy Club," Morrible gritted out through clenched teeth, annoyed that the girl had forced her to acknowledge the existence, and her own knowledge, of such a disreputable venue.

Elphaba laughed again, maliciously. "I don't know about you, Madame Morrible, but I have never crossed the threshold of such a place," she said, and laughed again. "I wouldn't know what goes on inside." This with a perfectly innocent cast of face, so virginal and sweet that, but for the child at her feet and the man in her bed, as well as a certain glint in her hazel eyes, Morrible would have believed in the girl's pretended sexual naivete.

"Fine," Morrible spat at last. "He'll be in the Royal Mall's rose gardens tomorrow at noon. Be there. He'll recognize you by your skin, you'll recognize him of course by his height."

"Did you inform him of his distinguishing characteristic in that fashion as well?" Elphaba spat. "I'm sure he was as unaware as I of what makes everyone stare at _him_. I'm sure he, like me, has never seen a mirror."

"I'm glad to see motherhood has not _dimmed_ your talent for sarcasm," Morrible said with equal vitriol.

"That's an old joke, Madame, you've used its inverse before," Elphaba said, but the worn memory of Morrible's public insult to the sheen of her skin years before, when she had been at her most vulnerable, less than a stumbling toddler taking her first awkward steps in the direction of resistance, still brought a dark bruising flush, with undertones of a lovely rose, to her thin cheeks. "Anyway," Elphaba said, willing the heat from her face quite convincingly, "I can't go tomorrow, Fiyero isn't well and I can't leave him alone, let alone with Liir. I'll go in a week."

"Fine," said Morrible, aware of the lengths to which the girl could be pushed, and knowing that the same illness of Fiyero's which allowed the girl to win this minor battle also meant that she could not run. "A week from today. Noon, in the rose gardens. I shall expect your first report from the resistance the day after that meeting, as well." And she swept out of the room, leaving Elphaba smiling for some unknown, unfathomable reason.


	12. Recovery

**a/n: So…Happy Lurlinemas Eve. Or, I guess, not happy, for Elphaba, anyhow (I just reread that section. I've decided when I grow up I'll be an awful parent and read that to my children instead of The Night Before Christmas, because guess whose family ruined **_**that **_**book? Also there's the whole not believing in Christmas thing. One, out of atheism, and two, because there's proof Jesus was born in June and they just picked December 25****th**** because it was the birth/feastday of a Roman god…which in turn is likely due to its proximity to the winter solstice…but hey. Just figured I'd give everyone some Elphaba-esque Christmas cheer). Yes, that all went in the parentheses. If no one has noticed, I am the queen of long sentences, according to my creative writing teacher. And they are usually grammatically correct, too. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

On the third day of her last week of relative freedom, Elphaba went out only once, to stock the cupboards with food and milk, more carefully than she had before (besides, there was a bite to the air now, and frost at the windows in the mornings, so Elphaba found if she stored the milk on the windowsill it would keep).

When she returned to her amateur ministrations to Fiyero (she was a decent healer; her two years and change as a nurse in the mauntery coupled with her academic training in biology and her Resistance education in anatomy- pressure points, where to stab, how to kill with only her thumb, and, yes, various ways to kill a man in coitus- but she was an awful cook, with an awful bedside manner), she began making broth for him and Liir. She hadn't eaten herself in days. While the soup simmered, she gloved her hands carefully, wet a cloth, and began to wipe Fiyero's face with it. She had disinfected his wounds with doubly painful salt water (her hands were raw from scrubbing at the bloodstains on the floor), and now she checked them carefully and salved the wounds with her oils. Her hands hurt like hell, and she was half glad for the penance it afforded her. Aspiritualism did not preclude masochism.

That day, the third day, he sat up and spoke.

…

For Fiyero, his rescue had been clouded, almost another dream figment. He was certain it was a dream, this shadow-figure of Elphaba hovering fuzzily at the periphery of his field of vision, the old corn exchange, the cries of a small child, even that old fishy head of Crage Hall, the one Elphaba was meant to have killed- it was dreamlike in its nonsensical composition and in the loveliness of Elphaba's attentions. He didn't believe in it until he awoke from his trance on the third day, his vision clear, not blood-clouded or hazy, for the first time in months. His thoughts were at least halfway lucid, and the pain had been tamed enough so that he could stand to be conscious. He raised himself slowly, slightly, from the pillow, gazing at the line of Elphaba's long, slender back as she stood at the table stirring his broth, and he said, barely audible, "Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae," the whole long trailing of her names, her incarnations, and he heard her drop the bowl she was holding, heard the sharp ceramic shatter, and with effort mustered a grin as she turned around, hands at her face, a smudge of flour on her nose.

He watched her gather herself, hold herself in, and stride over to him instead of leaping.

"You're awake," she said, and he could hear fire licking at the edges of her words, wanting to explode out and devour him. She put her hand to his cheek, slowly, as if to test his temperature, but in its path to his face she turned it palm down, and then her other hand came to the other side of his face and slowly, it seemed to him, but in reality it was only an instant, she had brought her face down to his and gently lifted his to hers and kissed him again, finally, carefully.

She pulled away when she thought things had gone quite far enough, considering his condition.

"Not yet," she said sternly. "You're ill."

"You're medicine," he tried, reaching for her again, but she was too quick. She was on her feet, laughing gently at his corniness, before he had time to even brush at her skirts. She went over to the other side of the table and bent down, then came over again, turned away from him, but with something in her arms. When she got close enough, he could see that it was a child, not the daughter of his imaginings but a boy, with dark curls and ivory skin and blue eyes burning brilliantly, curiously, out of a face Fiyero thought was a childish reworking of Elphaba's, softened and rounded at the sharp angles.

"Fiyero," she said, sitting gingerly on the bed with the boy on her lap. "This is Liir. Liir, this is Fiyero. Your papa- your father," she corrected herself, cheeks flushing darkly at the easy, girlish slip. Fiyero could recall that, during their affair, their one discussion of her childhood, Elphaba had called her father Papa; that at Shiz, Nessarose had as well, the night he learned that Elphaba had been called Fabala, and that she could sing, which was why he had remembered it. His children at Kiamo Ko, he thought with a pang, called him papa, even if they couldn't bring themselves to come near him. So he reached for the blue-eyed boy, who went to him unprotestingly. _Not so like his mother then, _Fiyero thought wryly.

"That's right, Liir," he said. "I'm your papa."

He played with the boy and pretended not to see Elphaba furiously swat away a painful tear.


	13. Lira

**A/N**: **Sorry…first semester of senior year actually counts. And then comes the literary magazine, which adds two extra hours to my day (or rather subtracts them from my free time, such that there is, which is not much) and I do need to keep a B in math so I don't have to take the final, meaning I actually have to work at teaching myself because I don't understand a word my teacher says (she tried to prove a trig identity- and then disproved it…) and…none of you care, so without further ado, the story!**

**Disclaimer: Well, except for this- much ado about nothing, nothing being what I own. **

Finally, the appointed day arrived and Elphaba could put it off no longer. She kissed Fiyero, who was slowly improving; he could not sit up for long periods without pain and had begun to stand and walk a few steps, reminding Elphaba painfully, pitifully of their son's similar, recent progress. After their first reunion, Elphaba had firmly refused to assent to further nightly exertions, as she could tell that, despite his protestations, the first had pained Fiyero and so, by extension, had pained her as well.

She picked up her son from his makeshift crib. His dark head lolled heavily against her shoulder, and for a moment- the first- she felt the comfort of holding that warm, small body, loose-limbed and trusting, against her, and didn't want to put him down.

She stood stunned by this new maternal feeling for a moment, clutching Liir to her, and wondering why not only the feeling itself but also its depth so surprised her.

She realized she had not truly felt anything but numb anxiety and mild irritation since she was last in this room. She felt then the old groundswelling of fear, revulsion, and anguish stab at her, and she shoved it down again, and with it went most of her momentary motherly softness.

Nonetheless she brushed a brief kiss onto Liir's hair and tucked him firmly between Fiyero and the wall, against which she placed a pillow. She handed Liir her old glass orb.

"Bye-bye," she told him, feeling idiotic. "Stay with Papa."

"Mama leave?"

"I'll come back soon. I promise." She grabbed her satchel and ran out of the room so that she wouldn't have to see Liir cry.

…

As Morrible had said, the dwarf was waiting in the gardens. Elphaba had walked through them before, of course, even on her way to kill Morrible (if only!) but she had never, even in the four summers she had lived in the City, noted their beauty. The whole place was suffused by soft, green light; the brilliant sunlight which made the Palace painful to look at was here gentled by the many trees. Roses bloomed in a chaotic profusion of reds, yellows, oranges, creams, and pinks; the only absent color was the green which covered everything else. Elphaba had to admit that the effect was lovely, rather like that awful orange hat of Galinda's had been on her.

"You'll be the one Morrible's sent?"

Elphaba whipped around, her stance low and tight, ready to attack, but it was only the dwarf.

"You are the one, yes?" he asked again.

"Yes," said Elphaba faintly, still preoccupied.

"Got a name?"

"Lira," said Elphaba, inventing quickly. "Lira Tigelaar." To take his name was a calculated risk and an honor, as well as her single concession to patriarchy.

The dwarf did not react. Elphaba, who had learned to study the minutest flicker of expression (but never to apply her knowledge to a decent demeanor), was reassured but not satisfied.

"What exactly do you need me to do?" she asked.

He looked at her askance. "You took a job and you don't know what it is?"

"Look," she said, "I have a son. The way I look- no one'd hire me to work in their house, and the alternative-" she stopped, thinking he would not expect her to finish, but he looked at her expectantly. "Does not seem likely either, nor appealing," she finished after a moment, blushing and swallowing a lump in her throat. She'd never been prudish about discussing sex, even at Shiz when she had fully expected to die without ever having experienced it. But prostitution was something else entirely.

"Where's your son?"

"With his father," she said tartly. "His father's ill."

Let the dwarf think she was married; she'd taken to wearing a ring since the mauntery. With her customary black wardrobe and Liir at her side, people thought she was a widow; it diverted unwanted attention and unanswerable questions. Let him think she needed to work because her husband was incapacitated; it wasn't so far from the truth.

"All right, Mrs. Tigelaar," the dwarf said finally. He stepped back, considering her. "That dress won't do," he said; "We're not at a funeral, are we?"

_Patronize me again and we will be, _thought Elphaba. _Yours_.


End file.
